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SONG: Don’t Mess with Us

Note: The melody is loosely based on Moshe Nadir’s “Der Rebbe Elimelech”

If you try to kill the Jews

Here’s a little piece of news:

God will stop you, and he’ll drop you dead instead

He got Hitler

He got Haman

And a dozen I’m not namin’

So don’t mess with the Jews

Or you’ll lose

If your aim is genocide

Then you’d better run and hide

`cause HaShem will turn the tide until you drown

Every exile and pogrom

We’ve emerged triumphant from

`Cause the Lord is our sword and our drum

So if you’re a neo-Nazi

And you think you’re hotsy-totsy

Or you’re blowing up civilians on a bus

You had best leave us alone

Or we’ll hora on your bones

You’ll be stuck, Chuck, so don’t muck with us.

So listen here, you goyim

Every girl and every boyim

Anti-Semitism brings you only tears

`Cause HaShem is in our corner

He will make your mom a mourner

For the sake of your kids

Be a friend to the Yids

Treat us nice, treat us well

Or you’ll barbecue in hell

It’s been like this for 5000 years.

Yagga dagga dagga dee, bugga bye

Buh buh buh buh bumm

Yooy booy bye bye dye byeyubuh

Yubba bubba bumm, hoy!

*****

NOTES & BACKSTORY:

“Don’t Mess With Us” made its debut, sung by Rabbi Sol Solomon, as part of a Purim segment on the March 16, 2003 episode of my radio show, “Dave’s Gone By.”

A tune about bad things that happen to people who do bad things to my people. the melody came from a song I was taught for the Purim holiday in Bialik School, a Hebrew elementary school on (ironically) “Church” Avenue in Brooklyn. I recall that Moyshe Nadir’s original song was about a drunken Rabbi calling for his fiddlers and pipers. What I didn’t recall (or was never taught) is that the German-Yiddish lyrics include a verse where the Rabbi gives a “fig-finger” gesture to poverty—which is more transgressive than anything in my own song or even much of my overall work. Go Moyshe!

Anyhoo, the final nonsense lyrics are snagged from a whole different song, Kaveret’s “Ha-Magafayim Shel Efraim,” which we also heard in Hebrew school.